Monday, May 16, 2011

Pictured above is an example of IRD's XCPro thumb shifters. Like many a retrogrouch of the late 90's, early 00's, my Suntour XC Pro thumbies were not just shifters. Rather, they were the embodiment of our valiant and seemingly doomed stand against an Orwellian future of carbon frames with integrated headsets and so forth.

So I was quite excited to see these, but the text in the product listing seemed to be lacking any discussion of friction mode. Seeing as how XC Pro thumbie and friction go together like Rivendell and twit tweed, I wrote IRD asking for a clarification.

Today I received a response and there is no joy in Thumbville, mighty IRD has struck out with index only "XC Pro" (ha!) thumbies.

This is a Bianchi Grizzly, ca. 1988/1987. The Grizz is a classic fully rigid MTB and was at the top of Bianchi's line. There were a couple of variants of the Grizz (Super G, Team G) that were a little nicer than the base version, but that aside, this was about as good as it got during the golden era of rigid mountain bikes.

This golden era ran from the late 80's into the early 90's. Prior to this, the mountain bike was just getting sorted out, for instance, angles tended to be slacker. Following this era, front (then rear) suspension started appearing and the brightest minds in the industry started working on this, relegating fully rigid bikes to the midrange. Plus, lugs started going out of fashion as well - this bike is fully lugged, even the fork has a vestige of a crown, you can see little in this picture:

The celeste handlebars are a nicely excessive touch. The Deore derailleur is classic silver and surprisingly pristine as are the biopace rings. Silver rims are nicely retro and double rear eyelets will fit with my plan for this as a city bike:

Japan in general has tons of bikes, but even by Japanese standards, Esaka, our little corner of Osaka, is pretty incredible on the bike front. Here is a very typical street scene in our neighborhood:

Every nook and cranny is stuffed w/bicycles:

Even the seemingly innocuous park across the road from our place, pictured from our seven floor verandah, covers the Esaka Park Bicycle Catacombs:

Here are a couple shots of the entrance to the catacombs:

Here is the north chamber:

Another shot of the north chamber that hints at the enormity of these catacombs:

Then there is the south chamber of the Esaka Park Bicycle Catacombs:

Keep in mind that this is under the park!

So the plan is to get the Grizz decked out as a city bike and join the fun here in Esaka. A road bike really would be way overkill - most of the bike traffic moves along at about 10 mph:

As we can see, spandex/drop bars are not the way to go in the Esaka bike culture:

So my plan for the Grizz is a utilitarian city bike. Here is what I'm thinking:

Stage 1: The existing saddle looks spent and the aftermarket seatpost is something I'd like to replace. For the saddle, I'm thinking a nice white Selle San Marcos Rolls:

Of course, the only thing that goes better with Bianchi celeste than white is more celeste, so I'll be pleased if I can track down a good condition old Bianchi saddle like this, although I'm not going to hold my breath:

Notice that I'm not considering a Brooks for this bike. This is for two reasons. The first is that the value of a Brooks really comes into play for longer rides, where they stay comfy all day long. The second is that this Bianchi is going to be an all-weather utility bike. And so while a Brooks can serve well in that environment, it takes some special effort for waterproofing, remembering a saddle cover, and so forth. However, for this bike, I'm going for maximal ease of use and as wonderful as leather saddles are, they do require some overhead.

The saddle and seatpost are really the only mods I feel I must do just to get this minimally serviceable.

Stage 2: Centerline tires and Berthoud Stainless Steel fenders. Berthoud stainless are both bomb-proof and classy, most other offerings suffer in one of those regards.

Stage 4: Dynohub wheelset. If I'm going to make a front wheel, I probably can't get a match rim to existing rims, so I may as well make a whole new wheelset.

The new dynohub Velo Orange is importing is not a game changer, sorry, but it is a pig at 700 grams. Schmidt is still tops for 2011 although Shimano is breathing down their neck with the DH-3N80. The Sondelux, at a mere 390 grams, is looking good - I had a Son28 that I purchased around the year 2000, rode ten years on it, then sold it for as much as I paid for it:

For the rear hub, a Paul Components Jono hub will do:

I'd like to lace these hubs to a set of Sun Rhyno Lite XL rims.

Lastly, this bike could finally be the reason to get some of those wonderful White Industries city pedals:

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

I have an interest in music and guitars that, like my bicycle fetish, dates to when I was young. Here is a pic of my fiddle buddy Dawn & I out busking on a sunny weekend a few years ago:

Dawn, incidentally, is a right smokin' swing fiddler when she puts her mind to it. A couple of years ago, I was playing with the mercifully short-lived 17th Street Canal Dixieland Band and asked Dawn to join us for a gig at the New Deal Cafe. At one point, things were dragging a bit, so I asked the rest of the band to sit out for a number and let Dawn and me have a little fun playing "Pig Ankle Rag". Eldon, our tuba player, liked what he was hearing, so he caught the latter part of this on his cellphone, resulting in this rare bootleg recording:

So what does any of this have to do with bicycles? Could it simply be that anyone hep enough to be into retro cycling and a reader of this blog is of course interested in feral street musicianship? I'd certainly like to think so, but just in case not, let's take a trip back to The Golden Era of Crummy American Workmanship, (aka, "The 1970's").

Away we go.....!

Back in those good old days, the cars, the houses, the clothes, the appliances - pretty much everything - sucked, with the exception of, so the story goes, the sex and the drugs.

Exhibit A:

The Vega was actually winning all sorts of awards back then like Motor Trend 1971 Car Of The Year. That is beyond satire....

Did I mention that the guitars sucked back then too? Gibson, for instance, had been bought by a Ecuadorean beer and cement company. This explains why Gibson guitars from this era sound like sound like they had been made by a Ecuadorean beer and cement company.

But nobody much noticed how bad Gibsons sounded then because all the guitars being made then, even the holy Martins, were pretty bad. The guitar makers had gotten the same memo as all manufacturers worldwide, save the Japanese ones, had received.

Actually, a few people did notice and this created a market for "the ones like they used to make". Some prescient folks actually started noticing in the 1960's and, foreseeing a market niche, went running around Appalachia chiseling widows and orphans out of that ratty old prewar Martin D28 herringbone that had been gathering dust under the bed since Daddy's liver gave out. I'm not going to name names, but you guys know who you are.

By the time I lost the trumpet and picked up guitar in the 70's, the old guitar stuff was already getting a bit spendy for most civilians, much less a teenager. Somewhere along the way between that price level and the current Sultan-level price of a prewar Martin, it started making economic sense for others to start making new guitars the way they used to.

Or at least try - the first attempts, while better than the offerings from the degraded established brands, were not as good as the old ones. But by the late 80's, early 90's, the industry had sorted out most of the issues. Since then, various luthiers have pushed the envelope much further to the point that, in my opinion, the best guitars, especially acoustic ones, ever made are being made right now. That doesn't mean there aren't notable exceptions from the past, but the general levels of quality construction, playability, volume, tone, etc, are as high as they have ever been, again, in my opinion.

One important thing to note is that this high level of quality does not just apply to the high end guitars, but all the way down to food chain to entry level beaters. If anything, the differences are greater at the bottom end; i.e, the difference between a 70's crummy guitar and a current crummy guitar is more pronounced than the difference between a 70's luxo guitar and a current luxo guitar. For the past 15 years, I've been in a state of continual astonishment at how nice a guitar one can get for 200-300 dollars, or sometimes even 100 dollars.

But the old ones remain expensive, because now they have mojo and whatnot. I don't subscribe to the whole old guitar thing, but even still I have one vintage guitar which is very high on the holy grail level:

Yes, a 1965 Gibson L5C with a Dearmond Rhythm Chief 1100 floating pickup. This thing is to die for, both in tone and value. Funny thing is, I almost never play it, the most playing time it has gotten in the years I've owned it is when I lent it to my buddy Kev to make a recording. Most times I just reach for one of these:

On the left is a 2006 Gretsch Country Club, on the right a 1994 Gibson J200. Both of these are relatively recent examples of classic models from the "way they used to make them" days and in many ways are arguably better than the originals and, while rather dear, are distinctly less expensive than their forebears.

One needn't be a rocket scientist, or even a bicycle mechanic, to see where this is all going - imagine a sector where new products suck, thereby creating interest in old products, which creates scarcity and drives up prices until it becomes economically feasible to start making new stuff in the style of the old stuff. Eventually, the big mo of the new stuff gets so large that the new stuff starts exceeding the old stuff in most regards other than mystic mojo, thereby creating a new golden age that exceeds the previous golden age that was originally simply being aped.

Years ago, I noted that this rebirth of the cool and the retro was likely going to happen in the bike market. Well, today's post is to announce that while this new golden era is still not quite upon us, it is getting pretty darn close and is officially a sure thing.

A couple of items splattered all over my radar screen recently. First, there are now at least three high flange freewheel accepting rear hubs available. One is the Phil Wood hub made for Rivendell that has been out there for a while:

This has recently been joined by Velo Orange's French-accented MaxiCar-redolent offering in both 126mm and 130mm OLD versions. In addition to the obviously sexy circular cutouts, there are a lot of nice details like the QR nut:

Wow, way to go on this one VO, and such a deal too at seventy five clams.

Not to be left out, Paul Components has released the Jono hub alluded to earlier on this blog. The Jono pegs the gizmo meter as it comes with enough spare bits to configure it any where from 121mm to 135mm with further variations in dish and chainline:

As an aside, it seems that there is no collective noun for high flange hubs, so perhaps the Fuji Otaku blog community should take the initiative for creating one. I'll start off by proposing "bling", as in "a bling of high flange hubs", but if readers wish to propose other ones, we can then have a runoff, selection by acclaim, and then formal entry of the term in to the permanent record.

This bling of new, freewheel compatible high flange hubs alone is enough for widespread rejoicing, but there is more, much much more.

One eternal question of every retro-cyclist has been, "Is a high quality, low profile, fairly wide (>22mm), silver, high polish, 700c box rim with double eyelets at an affordable price really too much for which to ask?" Apparently it has been, because while many have been called, such as Velo Orange with PBP and Raid rims, Bicycle Quarterly with Grand Bois, all squarely finishing in the "nice try" category, none have been chosen. That is, until now, as from out of nowhere, H+Son storms the field with their TB-14 rim:

I am in such slack-jawed awe of this rim that I can only say, "check out the counterweight treatment on the valve hole as shown on this gray anodized specimen":

Moving right along, there are now two modern version of my favorite old school triple crank, the Sugino Mighty Tour.

I suspect that these are both produced in the same factory somewhere in Taiwan as they are remarkably similar in price and appearance (I prefer the single flute on the IRD version) and completely identical in the areas in which they claim to improve upon the originals:

Cold forged and CNC'ed for greater strength

74mm BCD for stump-pulling small ring, originals shared the 110mm BCD for all three rings.

Again, being a big fan of the original Sugino Mighty Tour, there are several other ways I feel they differ and potentially improve upon the original. The new ones use symmetrical bottom bracket - the originals use an asymmetric BB with approximately +7mm on the drive side. This is virtually impossible to find these days.

The originals had cutouts on the spider arms whereas the new ones have flutes. The flutes will be appreciated by people who like things like this on Sugino Mighty:

But with the Mighty Tour could only do this:

So all this is very cool and furthermore, there is even yet more on the new component announcement front but I'm running out of time here and need to move on to the climactic finish of this blog post.

Many of us have suffered great disappointments in the pursuit of a mixte, as the reality often doesn't meet the dream. Most vintage mixtes are mid-grade or below bikes - the vast majority have at least one and often all of the following negatives - hi-ten steel tubing, derailleur "claw", stamped dropouts. Only a small fraction are nice cromoly bikes. But of those, most are rather small, 50/49cm being the most common size. Finally, a large portion of the nice ones will be French with French dimensions and all the headaches and limitations that poses.

My S-12-S mixte was very close, but ultimately too small. Here it is shortly before I sold it:

I kind of gave up my mixte longings after this one until recently. My urban village here in Osaka is prime city bike territory:

So I thought, ok, next time back in the U.S., I'll build up a mixte as a city bike and ship it over here. This led to me getting on Ebay and getting my hopes up about a nice Fuji Royale mixte frame in 55cm, cromoly tubing, forged dropouts, derailleur hanger - wonderful. So I set up auctionsniper.com to spend as much as $150 - I considered this ridiculous overkill but I just wanted to make sure I would win and end all the suffering.

In an epic miscalculation on my part, the frame ended up going to another sniper for $152 dollars before shipping. I can only wonder what his max bid was. Remember the part about stuff from the "way they used to make them" days becoming unaffordable? Five years ago, $150 would buy a pickup truck load of complete, minty, Fuji mixtes.

This left me in a funk that resulted in me buying a 1986 (I believe) Bianchi Grizzly to ride on some WV outings like the Greenbrier River Trail this summer. The Bianchi is a classic old school higher end MTB and is being shipped to a friend's house. Fortunately, old school MTBs are still relatively cheap and plentiful compared to their road brethren, although their prices have been climbing as well.

Here is a representative example of the type from 1987, note the rear U-brake, biopace chainrings and double rear eyelets. The only difference between this one and the one I purchased is that mine has a perfectly level top tube, indicating an earlier year. The handlebars on both years are celeste green, though not visible in this shot:

This did a lot to alleviate my mixte funk, but I still felt compelled to survey the current mixte market. Rivendell has their exquisite but ungodly expensive Betty Foy and an even more expensive Yves Gomez. In a less stratospheric but still daunting price level, Soma offers the excellent Buena Vista while Velo Orange has sold all their current production of their wonderful example. It is unclear if there will be any more of these from VO.

So not much new on the mid to high range. There are some new entrants on the mid-lowish end from Linus and similar. These are typically complete bikes and, being dedicated gear hub city bikes, lack derailleur hangers.

None of this excited me too much until I found this:

This, sir, is the recently released Origin 8 "Mixer". The first thing to note about this frame is that it can be had for about $180 which, interestingly enough, is nearly exactly what the Fuji Royale that got away would have costed when accounting for shipping.

Hmmm.... plot thickening ....

Remember the part about new "old" stuff getting more affordable than the old "old" stuff?

Now for the features on this thing. The tubing is triple butted cromoly, the fork is square crown cromoly. Dropouts have double eyelets both fore and aft, the rear are long horizontals with integrated derailleur hanger. There are plenty of rack and water bottle cage brazeons. The frame is designed for true long reach (55mm-73mm) brakes so that tires as large as 700c x 52 (yes, 52) will fit. Sizes are available up to 58cm.

Clearly, in at least some regards, the Origin 8 exceeds the Fuji Royale - tire clearance, frame material, rack/water bottle cage brazeons, . The Royale wins hands down on chrome fork lowers, lugged vs. welded frame, and old school mojo. The 1" threaded fork vs. the Origin 8 1-1/8 threadless will shock and offend some, but I'm agnostic on the subject, both designs have their charms.

On sheer functionality, the Origin 8 gets the nod, but as most desirable overall, the Fuji Royale, with lugs and chrome old school mojo, wins the decision, but not by a whole lot.

That is why we are still not in the new golden age of bicycles, the old ones are still arguably "better" or more desirable at the same price point. However, the gap is rapidly closing. I have little doubt that, say, 1 year from now, the Fuji Royale will be more expensive while the Origin 8 or equivalent from another company will be cheaper and/or maybe even lugged or otherwise more feature laden to win over guys like me.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

I only can now bear to show some post-accident pics of the Diamante. First, the overall damage. Remarkably, there is essentially no road rash, this was a solid, dead center bulls-eye connection:

There is some paint buckling on the top of the top tube indicating a bent tube. The little dotty bumps forward of the paint cracks are just pre-existing paint irregularities.

There is similar paint cracking on top of downtube.

The bottom sides of both the top and down tubes do not have any obvious creases but do have some waviness that can be felt with ones finger tips.

The head tube appears straight.

Shortly after the accident, I sent these pictures to Tommasini. They suggested the frame was a total loss. However, I'm not so sure and I may try to have the frame aligned/straightened before writing off this work of art.

Eagle-eyed viewers may note that the wheels in the first pic do not match those in other pics of the Tommasini on this site. That is because just a few days before the accident I had received a set of White Industries H2/H3 hubs laced to Torelli Triumph rims and had not yet had a chance to blog about them. Had I had the chance to blog, I would have been raving like a lunatic at how wonderful these wheels are. The White Industries hubs in particular are real primo kit, things don't get much better than that.

Here is hoping that this frame can be saved. I'm pretty optimistic - I once had a Tommaso constructed of Columbus SLX. I wrecked it once and continued to ride it for 5 years unaware that I had bent the frame - it had much worse underside buckling than this frame.

Friday, May 6, 2011

Been a while - a long while, actually, since my accident and tailing off on posts.

I'm basically recovered from the accident although I still get some pain in my ribs (I broke 9 of them, so this is understandable).

The Tommasini Diamante frame was a total loss. The forks were bent back and the the top and down tubes bent. A crying shame, but it is better to not get too attached to things.

I'm in Japan at the moment, here is some catch up stuff.

Here is my son learning how to ride. These pictures are actually from late last summer shortly after buying a bicycle for my son. Yeah, yeah, I know, no helmet, but this is Japan, just remember what it was like when you were a kid.

A little wobbly at first:

We who are about to ride salute you!

How quickly they grow up....

Also, right before my accident, I made up some very cool wheels. First, I started with these hubs I scarfed off of ebay:

Yes indeed, those are a set of Suntour Superbe high flange road hubs, don't see too many of these around. And these ones are cosmetically excellent as well as having spoke holes in great condition.

Unfortunately, the races were shot and spare Suntour Superbe races aren't exactly growing on trees. Fortunately, they use the same size as Campy Nuovo Record and those are a little more common, at least the rear ones. For the front ones, I had a Campy NR high flange hub in great shape except one of the flanges was bent.

Removing the old races from the rear Superbe hub was a breeze using a small special tool from Loose Screws. However, the old races from the front Superbe and donor Campy hub proved problematic. For the donor hub, destructive removal was ok (warning, graphic image):

Obviously, not a solution for the recipient hubs, which I took to a jeweler ultimately to get the old races cut out. Here are the races I removed from the rear hub. These hubs had evidently been sitting around for a long time. Fortunately, the rest of the hub parts were in quite excellent condition.

I decided to move my Electra Ticino/Velocity Synergy wheelset that had been on my Fuji America to Mrs. Otaku's Trek 720 and build up these Superbes for the Fuji America. So I needed some cool rims, ideally something that goes with the pervasive blue/blackness of the America. Ebay, ever faithful, obliged with some blue Mavic Open Pro's, 36h.

I'm not making this up:

Well, I did make up the wheels:

I keep telling myself I'm going to get a truing stand, but I keep getting satisfactory results w/out one. And here is the final outcome, sorry, not a very good picture: